DraftKings is a daily fantasy-sports site that lets
its users bet real money on their teams.

You may have seen its ubiquitous TV advertisements telling
you about how some of its members have cashed out crazy sums of
money using DraftKings.

Since August 1, DraftKings has spent $81 million on 22,000 ad
spots. By comparison, another billion-dollar fantasy sports
startup, FanDuel, has spent $20 million on 7,500 advertisement
airings since August 1, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Spending $20 million in a week does seem, from a business
perspective, a bit crazy, though it may work out if DraftKings
can acquire a ton of new customers. Indeed, DraftKings CEO Jason
Robins told the WSJ that the advertising is working for the
website— the company has added "hundreds of thousands
of new users per day, growing from 3 million users to 4.5 million
users" since the week before the NFL season started.

In addition, it sounds like the $20 million expense is an
outlier for DraftKings. Since the NFL season just started, now is
the time for DraftKings — and its rival company FanDuel — to seek
out new users.

“This is not something that is year-round for us,” Robins told
the Journal. “It’s a brief window where you can fish when the
fish are biting.”

We reached out to DraftKings to ask for comment and will update
this story if we hear back.